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Enterprise Customer Success

The Importance of App Security

Any application not properly protected whether for mobile, desktop, or web is at risk of being exploited by bad actors. Unprotected app vulnerabilities are impacting organizations across industries and around the world. Arxan commissioned research by Aite Group to assess just how widespread app vulnerabilities are.

It took an average of only 8.5 minutes to crack the apps analyzed in the study, underlying the importance of protecting applications.

The following was observed-all of which can be prevented or drastically minimized with proper app security measures in place:

Inadvertent data leakage due to sharing services with other apps on a device [observed in 90% of apps tested]

Vulnerability to insertion of malicious code (client-side injection) which can lead to skimming of user credentials or payment info; or to stealing of copyrighted content or other sensitive intellectual property [observed in 43% of apps tested]

Weak encryption, which can provide bad actors with full access to see or modify sensitive user data while in transit and lead to data exposure, key leakage, broken authentication and spoofing attacks [observed in 80% of apps tested]

Insecure in-app storage (hard-coding) of API keys and private certificates, which means once the app is cracked open, attackers have the ability to decrypt data such as financial transactions [observed in 27% of apps tested]

Execution of processes as the root user account, which translates to attackers potentially gaining access to disable services, read restricted data, copy of all transactions, and more [observed in 40% of apps tested]

There are countless potential security threats to applications. When addressed properly with application protection security solutions-including JavaScript protection, threat detection and limiting API connections to known good sites, along with defensive measures that can shut down application functionality in the event of an attack-effective application security enables customers to detect and protect against active threats, shielding businesses and consumers from data breaches and financial losses.